The Farm

Tom Rob Smith has written another excellent thriller that took me on a very satisfying joy ride full of unexpected twists and turns. Daniel, living in London, receives an unexpected visit from his estranged mother and is drawn into a possibly deranged story of a conspiracy that has turned his father against his mother. Has his parents retirement to a farm in rural Sweden driven his mother over the edge? Are the citizens of the nearby town concealing some dark secret that involves the disappearance of a teenaged girl? And how did the imposing and powerful father of the missing girl turn Daniel's father against his mother? Daniel has to figure out what is true to save his Mother from the demons of her past and present by traveling to The Farm in Sweden. Tom Rob Smith has a smooth and descriptive writing style than draws you in and pulls you along. I have read his Child 44 series and thoroughly enjoyed this one as well. Although this was long on exposition and not nearly as much action as his last three novels, the story was riveting and quite unpredictable in its conclusion. Smith is a master of his genre.

Eschewing the Cold War setting of the Child 44 series, Tom Rob Smith's novel The Farm finds its tension on a far smaller scale: in a conversation between a grown man named Daniel and his mother. By the time that conversation begins, we've heard Daniel's father's warnings - that his mother is mentally ill and paranoid, that she could be a danger to him or to other people. But when part of her narrative is that such accusations are to discredit her, it all comes down to who you choose to believe. Much of The Farm is dedicated to this long conversation, in which the mother spins the tale of a small rural community hostile to outsiders, the strange incidents she witnesses, and the horrifying conspiracy she begins to discover as she digs into things. What makes The Farm so gripping, though, is that the tale is so ambiguous; much of it can be taken as either dark foreshadowing or the paranoia of a damaged mind. And indeed, it's Smith's commitment to that ambiguity that makes The Farm so compelling, as we're constantly forced to question the mother's tale and Daniel's reactions to that tale. Ultimately, we know this has to come down to Daniel's choice: is this all true, or is it indications of insanity? And yet, even then, Smith doesn't let us off that easily, tying everything together in a way that both makes total sense and yet feels genuinely surprising. The Farm is a great psychological thriller, one that uses the idea of an unreliable narrator and makes it the central question of the book, all while still spinning a gripping tale that forces us to question the things we're seeing and how we interpret them.

When Daniel’s father calls from Sweden to tell him his mother has been committed to a psychiatric hospital, Daniel tells his father, “I’ll book a flight for the morning.” But by morning, his father has already called back. “Daniel, she’s not here!” Daniel’s mother has checked herself out of the hospital and it isn’t long before she calls Daniel and tells him, “I’m sure your father has spoken to you. Everything that man has told you is a lie. I’m not mad. I don’t need a doctor. I need the police. I’m about to board a flight to London. Meet me at Heathrow…” Tom Rob Smith begins The Farm with a great story premise. It’s filled with mystery and suspense and puts Daniel in an intriguing dilemma - who is telling the truth? Tilde arrives in London carrying a beat-up satchel, stuffed with chronological evidence implicating her husband, Chris, and others in a violent crime. What follows is a marathon tale of what was supposed to have been a happy retirement on a farm in Tilde’s native Sweden. It’s a race against time because Chris is on his way and will almost certainly commit her to a hospital in London. The momentum builds, as Smith introduces many mysterious characters with questionable motives. He blurs the lines by adding images of giant elk, fairy tale trolls, Swedish customs and harsh winters. Tilde’s rambling account of events on the farm at times seems plausible, but at other times her story seems far-fetched, her observations more and more paranoid. I enjoyed reading The Farm because of this interesting storyline, however, its momentum met an abrupt and unsatisfying open-ended finish, with limited explanation. It’s a curious mix of a modern story frame, filled with folk tales, local lore and characters with nearly superhuman physical fitness. Tilde swims out into a chilly river, rows boats, hauls wheelbarrows, paints barns, runs, and rides her bike everywhere, often in the middle of the night. Overall, however, I found The Farm entertaining, despite its ending and can picture this as a movie. It will be interesting to see what kind of story Smith publishes next.

This is a difficult book to review because, to do it justice, I’d have to reveal much of the plot and I don’t like to do that. However, the publicity “blurb” for the book gives full breadth to the conditions and circumstances which frame the first twenty or so pages. Daniel’s mother, Tilde, has arrived in London from Sweden and wants the quiet privacy with her son to tell her compelling story of secrets, crimes and conspiracies that have driven her away from Chris, her husband and Daniel’s father, and their farm in Sweden. She has left a Swedish asylum of her own accord and hopes to gain Daniel’s confidence and support. Author Tom Rob Smith spends over 200 pages letting Tilde carefully and methodically tell her story: how she was ostracized by other Swedes even though Swedish is her native language, the tragedy of a young woman’s drowning, and the mysterious disappearance of Mia, the daughter of the town’s most powerful man named Hakan. Smith has spun a powerful and tension-filled web and, as you read of Tilde’s experiences, you’ll wonder how much is real and how much is fantasy. When she completes her story, Daniel convinces his mom to enter a London facility for mental care. Being the loving and dutiful son that he is, Daniel flies to Sweden to conduct his own investigation of Tilde’s theories and allegations. With little cooperation by the citizens around Chris and Tilde’s farm, he learns of his mother’s truths, her fantasies, and a horrible secret that comes as a total surprise. Ultimately this is a story about what can go wrong in a family and how it can be corrected by those who care enough to go the extra mile with devoted care.

Having read TRSmith's Child 44 trilogy, I wasn't sure what to expect from The Farm. Well, it is completely different and not what I anticipated. It was better, more believable, and a page-turer for me. Lucid noir set in Sweden, it could well be a movie as another reviewer hinted. I do not quite understand the reviews that rip this novel which were likely based on personal taste. It has minor flaws, but the author does not oversell the plot and leaves it to the reader to imagine some explanations for character behavior. The twists are unexpected, the writing is compact, and the end not what one would surmise. After a couple days thinking about the novel, my satisfaction increased. I do not enjoy reviews that regurgitate the plot, so make of my views what you will. I enjoy thrillers, mysteries, and intrigue in novels. The Farm is not quite like any novel I have read, and perhaps that is why I enjoyed it so.

What starts out as a fairly interesting and intriguing tale of a mother's appeal to her son, attempting to defend her own sanity, quickly devolves into a drawn out re-telling of incident upon incident upon incident, with endless details, little of which the discerning reader will believe. Tilde's paranoia, whether intentional or not on the author's part, is blatant, and the credibility of the her tale diminishes as each chapter of monologue pleads with her son to believe her. The saddest part is that neither the mother Tilde nor her semi-closeted gay son are even remotely sympathetic characters in my opinion. And why this element of the son's sexuality was even introduced to the story line baffles me; he is only incidentally gay and, besides the fact that his supremely tolerant boyfriend foots most of the expenses incurred in his various quests, there is nothing that even connotes a need for this aspect of his character. The ending seems rushes when compared to the interminably drawn out bulk of the initial story, and the story abruptly closes leaving me with an apethetic, "So what?" Disappointing overall.

Moody Swedish setting, unreliable narrators, constant twists and turns -- what's not to like about this fast read? For me, it is the odd structure of the book -- not a cleverly constructed tale within a tale, but a clunky storyteller inside a storyteller. The protagonist, himself an admitted liar and an unreliable narrator of his parents' history, receives a call from his father in Sweden telling him that his mother has been committed, but has had herself released and is flying to meet her son in London. She arrives claiming that her husband has become involved in a conspiracy with a group of strange and powerful neighbors. She then provides a long narrative, intermittently broken by movement and phone calls, putting forth 'evidence' for her claim. While Smith cleverly doles out pieces of information, keeping the reader guessing, the storytelling lacks dialogue and tells far more than it shows. There is much to like about this book, but for me it is clearly a case of an author who could have benefited from careful revision.

The concept is great, and the mystery intriguing - I was hooked right away, expecting a new twist on "Gone Girl." And while there momentum of the narrative kept me engaged till the end, I found myself eager to finish, increasingly less impressed with the laborious, unnatural prose of the mother's rants. I'm reminded of the storyteller in "The Reluctant Fundamentalist." It's interesting to construct a narrative told by a single person in conversational context, but it's very difficult to make that narrative sound natural. People don't talk this way. The author makes attempts at justifying the structure on the mother's behalf, but it remains labored, which makes reading it less enjoyable. Three-quarters through the book, or so, the voice shifts to third-person, following Daniel, as he seeks out the truth for himself. At this point, the book settles into prose I felt I could connect with, establishing much more satisfying action. I liked this book, but tired of the mother's "voice," hoped it would be more, and ultimately did not feel entirely satisfied.